Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (47 page)

Although the degree to which
Kiss Me, Kate
employs the major-minor juxtapositions is perhaps unprecedented in a Porter show, the roots of this idea can be found in Porter’s pre–Rodgers and Hammerstein musical
Anything Goes
(and many other songs; see, for example its continuous presence in “Night and Day”). We have already observed that the verse of the title song in his earlier musical (
Example 3.2
, p. 56) clearly contrasts the past (minor mode) with the present (major mode). In another example, the sea chantey “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair” juxtaposes the modes to distinguish the hardships of a sailor’s life in the verse (minor mode) from the fair ladies waiting on land (major mode). The intimidation by Rodgers and Hammerstein may have inspired Porter to explore additional and increasingly subtle ways to capture nuances in his characters and in their texts, but he did not suddenly discover textual realism or the dramatic potential of music after attending a production of
Oklahoma!

Porter’s efforts to demonstrate even more thematic unity for the purposes of dramatic credibility, however, do distinguish
Kiss Me, Kate
from his pre–Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, including
Anything Goes
. It also arguably surpasses
Oklahoma!
, if not
Carousel
, in this respect. Some musical material such as the reappearance of the repeated fourth that marks the opening of the main tune of “Another Op’nin’” as the vamp in the following “Why Can’t You Behave?” (
Example 10.4a
, mm. 5–6), helps to create a smooth musical linkage between the first two numbers without conveying a comparable dramatic meaning.
¹³
But most connections do serve dramatic purposes. Bill and Lois, for example, share improper behavior. Bill is a shiftless yet likably dishonest gambler who signs an I.O.U. with Fred Graham’s name; Lois is a shameless and fickle (and equally endearing) flirt who, in the role of Bianca, will mate with any Tom, Dick, or Harry and, as herself, date any man who asks her out for “something wet.” It therefore makes sense that the verse of “Why Can’t You Behave?” returns in “Always True To You in My Fashion.” The transformation of “Why Can’t You Behave?” (
Example 10.4a
) from the first act, when it is sung by Lois to Bill, into an orchestral pavane in act II (
Example 10.4b
) reinforces the commonality between Lois and Bill. At the same time it further identifies Lois and Bianca as the same character and clarifies the usurpation of the “Behave” theme in “Fashion.”
¹⁴

Example 10.4.
“Why Can’t You Behave?” transformed in the Pavane

(a) “Why Can’t You Behave?”

(b) Pavane

Another musical figure that links several songs first occurs in “I Sing of Love.”
¹⁵
Not only does this song display a 6/8 meter that evokes popular Italian tarantellas such as “Funiculi, Funiculà,” it also presents a melodic and harmonic shift from C major to F minor (on the words “We sing of [C major] love” [F minor]) that will resurface in two songs from act II (a progression anticipated in “What Is This Thing Called Love?” from 1920). With only insignificant alterations this exotic, pseudo-Renaissance juxtaposition of major and minor harmonic shifts returns in the verse of “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” (also in 6/8 meter). Here Petruchio describes the awakening of his desire and occasionally love for the opposite sex many years before (“Since I reached the charming age of [C major] puberty” [F minor]). In “Bianca” the progression appears in reverse, F minor to C major, when Bill as Poet expresses his love for Bianca in the verse of the song that bears her name (“While rehearsing with Bianca, / She’s the darling I a- [F minor] dore” [C major]). In each case, love underlies the harmony and links the musical material.

Kiss Me, Kate
, act I, finale. Patricia Morison and Alfred Drake in the center (1948). Photograph: Eileen Darby. Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.

Also dramatically motivated are the thematic recurrences between the finales of act I and act II. At the end of act I Petruchio, accompanied by “all singing principals (except Hattie) and chorus,” serenades his shrewish new bride, who shrieks “No! Go! Nay! Away!” before breaking character and shouting “Fred!” The verbal battle between Kate/Lilli and Petruchio/ Fred that ensues is supported appropriately enough by a military march with dotted rhythms of a martial nature (
Example 10.5a
) before Kate sings a “quasi cadenza angrily” and the chorus concludes the act with a syncopated variant of “Another Op’nin.’”

Example 10.5.
Transformation of act I finale into act II finale

(a) March

(b) Waltz

Porter signifies his intent to parallel this ending when, at the outset of the second-act finale, he offers an unmistakable melodic transformation in triple meter of Petruchio’s act I duple-metered serenade. Instead of insults, Kate/Lilli now interjects various terms of endearment in Italian. Petruchio’s words, like Petruchio himself, remain unchanged from one act finale to the other, while Kate’s dramatically contrasting response reinforces the significant change she had revealed moments before in her final song, “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple.”
¹⁶
Finally, the second melody of the act I finale (the march,
Example 10.5a
) returns transformed into a waltz, the dance of love (
Example 10.5b
). The transformation from a militaristic march to a romantic waltz succeeds simply but effectively in establishing musical equivalences for the dramatic changes that have taken place in the dynamics between Kate/Petruchio and Lilli/Fred.
¹⁷

After Rodgers and Hammerstein, the second tough act for Porter and his collaborators Bella and Sam Spewack to follow was “the bard of Stratford-on-Avon” himself, Shakespeare. As Bella Spewack writes in the introduction to the published libretto, “We hated to cut Shakespeare.”
¹⁸
But when she received an unexpected and unwelcome new song from Porter, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” both Spewacks acknowledged that they would have to adjust to the unpleasant idea that Shakespeare would be playing second
fiddle to the demands of Broadway. Bella tells it this way in her introduction to the published libretto:

We realized that according to the classic standards of Broadway it [“Brush Up”] was a “boff” number—a show-stopper, if you please. Perhaps not a New Art Form, but definitely a must for the male patron. So instead of any throat-cutting [Porter had written that “Belle will probably cut her throat when she gets this”], we dropped the final scene (all Shakespeare) and a beautiful dance for which the stairs had been built. We had exactly three minutes left in which to finish our show.
¹⁹

According to Porter biographer George Eells, Porter’s decision to add another song, “Bianca,” for Harold Lang (Lucentio/Bill Calhoun) precipitated a strained correspondence between the Spewacks and the composer-lyricist.
²⁰
Since Lang, then known primarily as a dancer, was not yet the star he would become four years later as the lead in Rodgers and Hart’s
Pal Joey
revival, he was not given a solo when Porter and the Spewacks were planning their scenario. Patricia Morison, the original Kate/Lilli, recalls, however, that Lang “had it in his contract that he had to have a song in the second act” and “pulled a snit” until Porter decided “to write something that’s going to be so bad they won’t keep it in.”
²¹
Silly and parodistic of the old Gillette razor jingle (“Look Sharp”) as it is, “Bianca” added a great song and dance number for Lang and the show. Without “Bianca,” Bill Calhoun would only sing “Gee, I need you kid” near the end of “Why Can’t You Behave?” and a verse of “Tom, Dick or Harry,” and would remain virtually indistinguishable in musical importance from Bianca’s other suitors.
²²

Bella Spewack fought and won a battle with the producers to retain “Were Thine That Special Face” and persuaded Porter himself to leave “Tom, Dick or Harry” in the show. Nevertheless, the libretto that the Spewacks originally sent to Porter contained far more of Shakespeare’s
The Taming of the Shrew
than audiences would eventually see in
Kiss Me, Kate
. Most notably, the May libretto included Shakespeare’s lines in act IV, scene 5, when Kate capitulates to Petruchio and agrees that the sun is the moon or vice versa according to his whim, and Kate’s complete final speech in act V, scene 2.
²³
Porter would collaborate with the bard on an abbreviated version of this latter speech to produce “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple.” Gone entirely from the May libretto is the Induction (often cut from Shakespeare productions as well). Also removed from Shakespeare is the character of the Widow, the woman who eventually marries Bianca’s suitor, Hortensio. The Widow’s departure led to the demise of her counterpart in the Baltimore company as well, Angela Temple.
²⁴

The major dramatic departure from Shakespeare’s play, however, occurred after the May libretto draft. In May, when Lilli learns from Fred that she is no longer under the custody of the two gunmen and therefore free to abandon the
Shrew
play, she informs her ex-husband (Fred), without hesitation, that she will
not
desert:

FRED
: Well, Miss Vanessi, you may leave now.

LILLI
: I am not leaving!

FRED
: Sleeping Beauty [Harrison] waits in your dressing room.

LILLI
: Let him NAP!

FRED
: Don’t tell me the bloom is off (
HE
sneezes
)—the rose?
²⁵

A few lines later Fred and Lilli reprise “We Shall Never Be Younger,” a song that would soon be discarded. The two had sung a portion of this song together to conclude their duet in act I, scene 1, “It Was Great Fun the First Time,” and Lilli sang the whole song alone in her dressing room two scenes later. Although the two stormy actors are not yet fully reconciled, an audience could reasonably infer from the reprise of their shared song that Fred and Lilli are on the verge of starting a happier third act together.

By December the Spewacks made a significant alteration in the dialogue to set up Fred’s reprise of the newly added “So in Love” to replace “We Shall Never Be Younger” in act I:

FRED
: You’re free to go. You don’t have to finish the show…. Aren’t you taking Sleeping Beauty with you?

LILLI
: Let him sleep.

FRED
: Don’t tell me the bloom is off—the rose? … Lilli, you can’t walk out on me now.